MIMO antenna for T-Mobile 5G home internet gateway?

I recently rolled the dice on waveforms external antenna. My parents chose T-Mobile for home internet because of the awesome results I have had at my home. They also lacked any other real options. I would strongly consider moving before I ever considered settling for CenturyLink or HughesNet and this is what they faced. Luckily T-Mobile was available so they signed up. Gateway arrives, I set it up, and run the first speed test. 21mbps up and 4mbps down. This was super disappointing considering I consistently see speeds over 250mbps down and 35-40mbps up at my home from T-Mobile. They have a tower 0.83 miles west of their location so I expected much more. The issue they face is that their property is densely wooded including a high volume of large trees that completely surround the home. So, I took a gamble on an external panel 4x4 mimo. Super simple to connect to gateway. I used a gps to determine the exact azimuth to the nearest tower. Ran some test speed test with the antenna on the same side as that tower and pointed in its direction. I also tried it in various other locations on all sides of the house running test from each. Ultimately the location on the same side and pointed at nearest tower showed best results so I mounted it up. Not difficult to do at all. The only issue I could see being a problem would be if the best location ended up being on the front center of the home. While it isn't this massive sore thumb on the house it is noticeable. Luckily our spot ended up being the back corner of the house. With install complete I went back to run a series of speed tests. Using the external antenna saved us from the 21mbps down we started with. Now, my parents consistently get speeds of 350mbps down during the peak use times and sometimes as high as 500mbps down during off hours (1:00 am). Honestly, I was absolutely floored. I never expected gains like that. Now that I have seen the possibilities I don't see why everyone would get one. If you are going to rely on you primary internet service arriving via 4g or 5g why wouldn't you do everything to grab every extra bit of signal strength or speed or reliability you can. For me and my family it is totally worth every penny.

If anyone has any additional questions about it feel free to reach out. I would be happy to help. 

Some have seen improvements, and some have not.. I think it depends on how close you are to the towers, the direction you point the antennas, quality of the antennas and how high you mount them if the tower is at a higher altitude then you. It's more of a try it and see, but remember if you break anything during this it could cost you $370 to replace that gateway according to my contract with T-Mobile Home Internet.
And those U.FL Male connectors on the built in antennas can be fragile so be careful when removing the ones connected, and connecting the pigtail ones.
Also, be sure to remove the sim card after powering down the until or it can drop inside the can and might be hard to get it out.

TwoCutes wrote:

Hola all - 
New T-Mobile home internet user, here.  I set up my 5G internet gateway (silver cylinder) this weekend and it works just fine.  I have Frontier DSL and Charter Spectrum now and T-Mobile is currently way outperforming Frontier DSL and outperforming Charter Spectrum almost always.

I found this article about installing a MIMO antenna using the internal gateway ports. 

https://www.waveform.com/a/b/guides/hotspots/t-mobile-5g-gateway

Has anyone tried it?  I would be interested in experiences and results.  ¡Gracias de antemano!

I have it worth every penny if you are not getting good signal as is.

If you use the search I am sure you will find my countless post on it.

ErikS1002 wrote:

I recently rolled the dice on waveforms external antenna. My parents chose T-Mobile for home internet because of the awesome results I have had at my home. They also lacked any other real options. I would strongly consider moving before I ever considered settling for CenturyLink or HughesNet and this is what they faced. Luckily T-Mobile was available so they signed up. Gateway arrives, I set it up, and run the first speed test. 21mbps up and 4mbps down. This was super disappointing considering I consistently see speeds over 250mbps down and 35-40mbps up at my home from T-Mobile. They have a tower 0.83 miles west of their location so I expected much more. The issue they face is that their property is densely wooded including a high volume of large trees that completely surround the home. So, I took a gamble on an external panel 4x4 mimo. Super simple to connect to gateway. I used a gps to determine the exact azimuth to the nearest tower. Ran some test speed test with the antenna on the same side as that tower and pointed in its direction. I also tried it in various other locations on all sides of the house running test from each. Ultimately the location on the same side and pointed at nearest tower showed best results so I mounted it up. Not difficult to do at all. The only issue I could see being a problem would be if the best location ended up being on the front center of the home. While it isn't this massive sore thumb on the house it is noticeable. Luckily our spot ended up being the back corner of the house. With install complete I went back to run a series of speed tests. Using the external antenna saved us from the 21mbps down we started with. Now, my parents consistently get speeds of 350mbps down during the peak use times and sometimes as high as 500mbps down during off hours (1:00 am). Honestly, I was absolutely floored. I never expected gains like that. Now that I have seen the possibilities I don't see why everyone would get one. If you are going to rely on you primary internet service arriving via 4g or 5g why wouldn't you do everything to grab every extra bit of signal strength or speed or reliability you can. For me and my family it is totally worth every penny.

If anyone has any additional questions about it feel free to reach out. I would be happy to help. 

Did you have to dissect the router to install or is this plug and play? If so what's the connector type to plug and play 

Hola Ijh,

Yep, those are the antennas, I used four of those. Was expensive, well worth it and I have not lost the secondary signal once.
 

1. First setup was two flat panels from Waveform for a 4X4 mimo. Would work for a day and then I would lose the secondary signal. This setup was also picking up a T-mobile tower that is not 5G, and thus dropping the secondary connection. Great download speed, upload speed was horrible at .30mbps
2. Second setup was a Yagi combined with a flat panel for a 4X4 mimo. Would work for about three days and then drop the secondary signal. Great download speed, upload speed was horrible at .30mbps
3. Third try was two Bolton Long Ranger Parabolic antennas & and it still dropped the secondary signal.
4. Fourth try was 4 Bolton Long Ranger Parabolic antennas,it has held the secondary signal. It switches from band B2 to band B66 with 5G band N71. Download speed of 155mbps, upload speed of 15mbps.

I used:

https://store.nwtowers.com/products/poynting-xpol-2-5g-us-antenna-a-xpol-0002-v3-11

Or:

https://smile.amazon.com/Bolton-Technical-Directional-X-Polarised-Connector/dp/B08SFP9XMZ/ref=sr_1_11?crid=37JTM2FCBQRAI&keywords=bolton+technical+long+range+antenna&qid=1643567874&sprefix=bolton%2Caps%2C166&sr=8-11

Have to get n41 & n71

3.01 Miles from 5G newly updated T-Mobile tower. Some trees but not dense.

Cylinder mounted outdoors and only using one set of antenna ports for above antenna.

Sometimes speeds are into the 400 Up range but normally 250 Down 10-20 Up. Before antenna

half of the above speed.

I am very Happy with External Antenna Route. Use this video to add pigtails:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXSpbP8NuWw&t=773s

O

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiO-xqFbVho&t=7s

So I added another panel antenna and now averaging almost 300 down. So now I have the Poynting xpol and an Amazon purchased antenna. 
 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08CRN6HYY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_6E4PJ5XGZSAZ6P2F70SB?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Im very happy with setup. separate the panel antenna about 5 ft from each other. 

Poynting XPOL-2-5G Antenna (A-XPOL-0002-V3-01) 

from NorthWest Towers.

Anyone knows what are these ports on the new Tmobile Arcadyan KVD21 Gateway? M, M1, M2, D, 4, and 5 ports.  Which ports give the best signal and speed? 

magenta7882957 wrote:

Anyone knows what are these ports on the new Tmobile Arcadyan KVD21 Gateway? M, M1, M2, D, 4, and 5 ports.  Which ports give the best signal and speed? 

m & d are the 4g pairs, m1 & m2 are the 5g pairs